The Saint Louis-based company that makes dicamba is responding to a proposed ban on the high-tech weed killer for the 2018 growing season. Ty Vaughn, global regulatory vice president for Monsanto, said the company is disappointed and troubled by a vote from the state plant board to pursue a ban on farm applications of dicamba after April 15. Vaughn said dicamba is being used successfully in other states. “We’ve seen growers in 33 states over the past year have really good success with our system. Our main goal here is to allow growers in Arkansas to have the same access,” said Vaughn.

Roughly a month after the Brazilian government said it would open a wide swath of Amazon rain forest to mining interests, it has backpedaled on that controversial decision. In a statement Monday, the country's Ministry of Mines and Energy said President Michel Temer would issue a new decree restoring the original conditions of the nature reserve.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the influential Foreign Relations Committee, will not seek re-election in 2018.

He is the first senator to announce retirement plans ahead of next year's election cycle.

"I also believe the most important public service I have to offer our country could well occur over the next 15 months," Corker said in a statement, "and I want to be able to do that as thoughtfully and independently as I did the first 10 years and nine months of my Senate career."

Two days after the German parliamentary election, the country is still absorbing the results — especially the gains made by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the first far-wing party to win seats in Parliament since the 1950s.

Last month, Hurricane Harvey brought unprecedented flooding to the Houston area. More than two weeks ago, Hurricane Irma hit Florida as a remarkably massive and long-lasting storm.

Those storms have long since dissipated. Now much of the focus has shifted to Hurricane Maria, which remains an active storm — a storm that caused devastation in Puerto Rico, which is still reeling from the immediate impact.

How do you judge how good a school is? Test scores? Culture? Attendance?

In the new federal education law (the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA) states are asked to use five measures of student success. The first four are related to academics — like annual tests and graduation rates. The fourth measures proficiency of English language learners.

The fifth is the wild card — aimed at measuring "student success or school quality" — and the law leaves it to states to decide.

So many great writers have given us so many great quotes in an attempt to capture New York, but I think my favorite is by the legendary New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling: "Before it was anything else," Liebling says, "New York was a seaport, and before anything else, it still is."

Jennifer Egan clearly shares Liebling's view in her latest novel, Manhattan Beach. Egan is known for the edgy tone of her work and for her fragmented storylines that require some self-assembly by readers.